Word: kuala
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...Building Kuala Lumpur's Islamic Arts Center, an Arabian gem replete with white marble, rippling fountains and sky blue onion-shaped domes in the middle of Malaysia's tropical capital, was a labor of love for two men. One of them is Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad. Prior to the four-story museum's completion in 1998, Mahathir would regularly show up at the construction site, often after his weekly equestrian sessions. At his side was a skinny, balding businessman named Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary. The two men would pore over blueprints, tour the site to monitor progress...
...Mokhtar now administers his far-flung holdings entirely through nominees: associates say his name hasn't appeared in Kuala Lumpur's Registry of Companies since he progressed beyond his first cattle and rice trading ventures in the 1980s. Still, there is no mistaking that he is the 76-year-old Prime Minister's new favorite son, and to many of those following his sudden rise, the story sounds all too familiar. (Mahathir did not respond to TIME's interview requests; Mokhtar declined to be interviewed.) Since the 1997 financial crisis, Malaysia has been treated by the international financial community...
...country's trade surplus is swelling and international bond rating agencies have been bumping up Malaysia's grades. More important, foreign investors are actually putting their money?so long withheld?back into the country. A recent bond issue by Malaysia's national oil giant Petronas was heavily subscribed. The Kuala Lumpur stock market?shunned by international investors after Mahathir temporarily imposed strict controls on the movement of money out of Malaysia in September 1998?has soared, rising about a third over the last year, a period during which Basu estimates that as much as a billion dollars has poured...
...direction, plenty of reservations remain. Mokhtar's detractors say he appears to be just the latest rider on Malaysia's crony-go-round. "Mokhtar is enjoying a rapid rise like Halim Saad and Tajudin Ramli and is closely aligned with Mahathir," says Terence Gomez, who teaches economics at Kuala Lumpur's University of Malaya. The issue has roiled the usually placid waters of Malaysia's press. Writing in the business weekly The Edge, journalist P. Gunasegeram penned a column about Mokhtar titled, "When One Man Gets Too Much." Gunasegeram chronicles past disasters that he blames on cronyism, charges that they...
...fact, it can be hard to find anyone in Kuala Lumpur who seriously thinks that the headstrong Mahathir?who thumbed his nose at the world during the Asian crisis by imposing currency controls, a move even his critics now grudgingly concede probably shielded the country from the social dislocation seen in some Asian neighbors?has abandoned his cherished head start program for Malays. "He definitely wants the emergence of the Malay capitalist," says Megat Najmuddin Khas, who heads the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance. "There is nothing wrong with the policy," Megat argues?as long as the right people...